I will be presenting a paper titled “Subjectivity and Structuralism” at this year’s annual Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy Congress, to be held here in St. John’s. Are any readers of the blog presenting or attending? I’ve included by abstract below. It is essentially working within the same area as as “Structure, Sense and Territory,” except focused entirely on the problems of structuralism that occupy the first half of that paper and focusing more on how this show Badiou to be less-than-revolutionary.

“Subjectivity and Structuralism” Abstract:

While attention has been payed to the pre-evental in Badiou insofar as such an analysis could foster political revolution, nothing substantial has been said on the possibility of a primal or ur-event. In attempting to understand what could constitute the first event, we will explore Badiou’s anthrocentrism and his connection to the structuralist understanding of the relation of humanity to nature as one of alienation as exemplified in his allegiance with Lacan and Rousseau. It will be suggested that to accept Badiou’s model of subjectivity, one must also accept the structuralist thesis that the human is equiprimordial with language.